Chapter 59

Chapter 59: Chapter 59

The first month at the Imperial Academy settled into a grueling routine.

For the aristocratic students the curriculum was a rude awakening. The scholars demanded perfection in the theoretical application of environmental Ember. The physical conditioning in the Vanguard Pits broke the softer nobles within two weeks and left them bruised and exhausted.

For me, the Academy was a vacation.

I could sleep without one eye open, listening for the skittering claws of insects, and I no longer had to ration stale bread or drink mud to stay hydrated. The meals in the grand pavilion were rich and endless, and they fed the heavy caloric demands of my Swelled Bud metabolism. In the combat arenas I stayed undefeated. After the second week students stopped challenging me for the Rank Three position. They had worked out that in close-quarters combat, my efficiency was more than they could overcome.

But beneath the polished surface of the citadel ran a cold current of paranoia.

Kaelen and I had spent the whole month waiting for the powder keg to go off. After discovering that the Republic had smuggled alchemical explosives into the lower cellars inside wine barrels, we had quietly tried to track where they went. The barrels vanished within two days, scattered into the depths of the Crown Jewel. We couldn’t go to the Headmaster, because we had no idea which administrators or guards were on the Republic’s payroll.

So we waited. We honed our Ember, memorized the layout of the capital, and kept our weapons sharp.

On the twenty-eighth day of our enrollment, the pressure of the curriculum lifted for a day. It was the Festival of Jute, patron goddess of the capital and deity of law, order, and justice. By decree of the Headmaster, all lectures were suspended and the iron gates of the citadel were thrown open so the students could go down into the city and join the celebrations.

"You are not wearing that into the city," Nia said flatly.

I was standing in the middle of our dormitory, strapping the leather scabbard of my runic bastard sword across my back. I had on my standard charcoal-grey Academy uniform.

"It’s functional," I said, adjusting the straps across my chest.

"It’s a target," Nia corrected, walking over to her big wardrobe. "The locals of the Crown Jewel tolerate the Academy, but they don’t love us. Walking through a crowded festival in the uniform of the elite is asking for pickpockets and drunken brawls. We’re blending in."

She tossed a garment onto my bed. I picked it up and checked the cloth. It was a well-tailored tunic of dark crimson linen, reinforced with leather stitching at the waist and shoulders, with a pair of heavy dark trousers to go with it. It looked like the clothing of a wealthy mercenary or a traveling merchant guard.

"Fine," I conceded, recognizing that anonymity has value in a crowded city.

Half an hour later the four of us walked across the grand southern bridge, leaving the towering spires of the Academy behind as we went down into the lower tiers of the capital.

The Crown Jewel had transformed. The wide paved avenues were packed shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of citizens, and every building, from the humblest merchant stall to the tallest marble estate, was draped in banners of gold and emerald green, the colors of the Goddess Jute.

The air was thick with smells. Roasted lamb, heavily spiced with cumin and black pepper, wafted from hundreds of street vendors, and the sweet scent of blooming jasmine hung over everything, pushed along by breezes that atmospheric Ember-users had been hired to raise for the event. Music rang out from every courtyard. Troupes of acrobats vaulted across the rooftops and left trails of glowing, harmless sparks behind them.

Luckas was in his element. He wore a fitted civilian doublet of midnight-blue velvet with his silver longsword at his hip, and he moved through the crowd like a nobleman who was used to the world parting for him.

"This is the heart of the world, Elvit!" Luckas shouted over the roar of a passing marching band, handing a vendor a silver coin and tossing me a skewer of roasted meat. "You won’t find this in the mud!"

I caught the skewer and took a bite. The meat was excellent. My eyes kept moving over the rooftops, the alleyways and the hands of the people passing by.

"It’s a nightmare," I said, finishing the skewer in three bites. "Too many choke points. The crowd density restricts movement. If a panic starts, hundreds will be trampled before the city guards can even draw their weapons."

"You’re impossible," Luckas said, laughing and shaking his head. "Try to relax. Just for one night."

Kaelen walked silently on my left, his storm-grey eyes sweeping the crowd with the same cold paranoia I carried. He wore a plain black tunic with a high collar, his throwing knives hidden up his sleeves. We traded a brief glance. Neither of us was relaxing. The Republic’s gunpowder was still out there.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the festival grew louder and brighter. We ended up in the Merchant’s Square, a big open plaza near the edge of the third tier, overlooking the freshwater lake below. Nia was haggling hard with a jewelry merchant over a silver necklace, using her provincial nobility to wear the man down, while Luckas bought a round of expensive spiced southern wine at a nearby tavern stall.

I stood by the stone balustrade at the edge of the plaza, taking in the city. Astra, who had refused to be left in the dormitory, sat on my shoulder, his black eyes following the thousands of paper lanterns drifting up into the twilight sky. The Rune of Antiquity lay dormant under my right sleeve, but I felt the atmosphere change without it.

It began as a faint drop in the ambient environmental Ember, almost too slight to notice.

I set my cup of wine on the balustrade. My heart rate slowed as my Swelled Bud biology went from rest to coiled readiness in an instant.

"Kaelen," I said quietly, without turning my head.

Kaelen appeared at my side a second later, having left Luckas at the tavern stall. "I feel it. The ambient magic is being siphoned. Someone is drawing an enormous amount of Ember to a single point."

I turned and scanned the packed plaza. Thousands of civilians were laughing, drinking and watching the lanterns. A handful of city guards patrolled the edges, leaning lazily on their halberds.

"Where is it pulling to?" I asked, my voice tight.

Kaelen closed his eyes, his pale face drawn in concentration. "Below us. The foundational supports of the third tier."

I went cold. The third tier of the Crown Jewel rested on thick, ancient arches of reinforced limestone. If those supports gave way, the whole plaza and the thousands of people on it would fall into the lower city.

"Nia! Luckas!" I roared, and my voice cut through the noise of the festival like a vanguard commander’s. "To me! Now!"

Luckas spun around, spilling his wine. One look at my face and he asked no questions. He grabbed Nia by the arm, leaving the silver necklace behind, and sprinted toward us.

They didn’t make it in time.

The explosion sounded like the world tearing itself in half.

The shockwave hit first. The cobblestones under our feet buckled upward, and then the roar of detonating alchemical black powder rolled up from the levels directly beneath the plaza. The stone balustrade beside me shattered. The beautiful architecture of the Merchant’s Square split apart. A wide fissure tore through the center of the plaza and swallowed screaming civilians whole as the ground beneath them simply ceased to exist.

The blast threw Luckas and Nia backward. I planted my boots and drove the weight of my frame into the shifting stone, holding myself in place against the tremor.

A dense plume of black smoke erupted from the fissure, blotting out the floating lanterns and plunging the square into darkness.

The music stopped. The laughter died.

For three seconds there was silence while the citizens of the Crown Jewel tried to understand what had just been done to their invincible city.

Then the screaming began.

It was a wave of pure terror, thousands of voices at once. Civilians panicked and surged toward the narrow avenues leading away from the plaza, and the crowd turned into a crushing stampede.

"Get up!" I barked, grabbing Luckas by the collar of his midnight-blue doublet and hauling him to his feet. I pulled Nia up after him and shielded her with my body as terrified citizens shoved past us.

"What happened?" Luckas coughed, his eyes wide, blood trickling from a small cut on his forehead. "Was that a magical misfire?"

"That was Republic gunpowder," Kaelen said coldly, stepping out of the black smoke with his throwing knives already drawn and gleaming in his hands.

Before Luckas could take in the words, a second explosion rocked the city. This one was farther off, in the direction of the grand southern bridge.

The Republic was striking at several points across the city at once, and the plaza was only one of them.

Through the swirling black smoke pouring from the fissure, silhouettes began to emerge, moving in rigid tactical formation while everyone around them ran. There were twenty of them. They wore plain matte-grey armor with no noble crests or Imperial insignia. Heavy iron masks covered their faces, built to filter out the alchemical smoke. Each carried a repeating crossbow, an expensive and highly illegal weapon that could fire six iron bolts in quick succession without reloading.

The Republic commandos had blown the plaza to make a kill box.

"Clear the square!" the leader of the commandos barked, his voice muffled by the iron mask.

The commandos raised their repeating crossbows and fired straight into the fleeing crowd.

Iron bolts tore through the smoke and struck men, women and children alike. The slaughter was cold and fast. The handful of city guards in the plaza tried to draw their swords and were shot down before they could scream, their blue tabards shredded by the volley.

Nia gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as a merchant went down a few feet from us.

Luckas’s shock burned off into fury. His Ember flared and his velvet doublet began to steam. He reached for his silver longsword.

"No," I said, closing my hand around his wrist like a vise.

"They’re slaughtering them, Elvit!" Luckas snarled, trying to pull his arm free.

"They have repeating crossbows and overlapping fields of fire," I said, the vanguard part of my brain working at full speed. The Rune of Antiquity stayed dormant, because I could read this battlefield without magic. "Charge them head-on and you’ll be full of iron before your sword even sparks."

"Then what do we do?" Nia shouted over the screams, pulling a small dagger from her boot.

I looked at the twenty commandos advancing through the smoke and finishing off the wounded, and at the civilians dying in the choke points. The Imperial Academy had taught us theory and the capital had shown us luxury, but this was mud and blood, and I knew how to fight in it.

I let go of Luckas’s wrist, reached over my shoulder and took hold of the leather-wrapped hilt of my runic bastard sword. The dark steel hissed as it cleared the scabbard.

"Kaelen," I said, my voice dropping into a lethal calm. "Take the right flank. Use the smoke. Go for their eyes and throats. Luckas, you’re the anvil. Draw their fire and melt their bolts. Don’t advance past the fissure."

"And you?" Luckas asked, drawing his sword. The blade burst into roaring orange flame.

"I am the hammer," I said.

I stepped out from behind the ruined balustrade with my sword raised and walked straight into the black smoke.